So tonight I was watching the local news and on the ticker it said that at least 120 people were feared dead after a boat capsized on Volta Lake (the world’s largest artificial lake and the source of hydro electricity in Ghana). So that was pretty shocking, but what was even weirder was that the anchors didn’t mention it. Not once. I missed the start but at the end when they did the round-up of the headlines, they didn’t say anything. Perhaps it was late-breaking, but still. So that was strange.
Dr. Addae didn’t come back from Accra yesterday and as of 8 pm tonight he’s still not back. I can’t get any service on my phone, so I haven’t talked to him. No big deal, I’m a big boy and can look after myself. Or I can go to the kiosk and get them to cook me an omelette like I did for dinner. It’s a pretty sweet set-up: a frying pan over a little coal fire and a three-egg omelette with onions, tomato, garlic and bread for about 60 cents.
But I don’t have much to do on the work front. I’ve started the accreditation forms for our college, but I really need Dr. Addae’s help to answer most of the questions. ‘Forms’ is a bit misleading, as it’s actually a book and to finish it will take a long time because it involves coming out with a governing structure, code of ethics, tenureship review process and a million other things that I’m not sure of yet as I’ve only looked at the first 20 pages and it’s probably 100 pages long!
I’m going to end with something political. I love France. It’s beautiful, the food is amazing, the people are great, Cristobal Huet is French and I would really like to live in Paris at some point. But politically, I don’t love France. They are totally duplicitous and hypocritical on the international stage (ie accuse the US of unilateralism then go and invade Cote D’Ivoire) and domestically, the people are selfish and short-sighted (as are people in many other countries, to be fair). The recent strikes/riots that resulted in the scrapping of the youth employment law highlight this perfectly. For me, not having been brought up to expect a job-for-life at age 24, it sounds ridiculous to go on strike because a law has been introduced that would allow people to be fired in the first two years of their contract. I think (hope) most of us not from France were thinking “you mean they can’t be already?”
The whole thing seems so obvious: no one wants to hire any young people because they’ll never be able to fire them if the economy takes a downturn or they are simply not good workers. The predictable result is rampant youth unemployment. France’s sclerotic system needs reform but their spineless politicians don’t have the spine (duh!) to push even the most obvious and basic ones through. In fact, the only ‘reforms’ that the electorate seem to want are ones to make things even more bureaucratic and over-regulated than they are now. In the spirit of these revolutionary times, with its echoes of 1968, perhaps it’s time for a new motto for France. Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité is so outdated, so passé. How about “France: Where Riots Work But Young People Don’t” (h/t to Mark Steyn for that line). Au revoir mes amis, à bientôt.
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